Thank heavens for the joys of Burgundy
Jan 29 2010 By Helen Savage, The Journal
Jadot is currently my favourite among the big merchant houses of Burgundy. Every wine they make reveals something of the distinctive character of its village, vineyard and vintage. Their wines are easy to find too. Fenwick has an especially good selection as does Waitrose.
But it is the smaller growers who excite me even more. My big discovery at the January tasting was the glorious wines of Romain Taupenot. His family estate, Domaine Taupenot-Merme is at Morey Saint Denis, between Beaune and Dijon in the heart of the Côtes de Nuits, where most of Burgundy’s richest, most seductive red wine is made.
Romain has farmed his land organically since 2001. He believes that if the fruit is good enough, it should be handled as simply as possible in the winery. “We add nothing,” he told me, “no yeast, no bacteria to start the malo-lactic fermentation, no extra tannin. We want our wine to be as authentic as possible and true to the particular character of its vineyard.”
He’s not dogmatic about the size of his yield, unlike many vignerons who try to impress journalists by claiming that they restrict their crop to minuscule proportions. Instead he shrugs slightly and says, “We adapt them according to the particular conditions of each vintage.”
And he adapts his winemaking practices each year too.
“In 2007 the skins of the grapes were riper than the pips so we tried to get more oxygen into the vats to polymerise the tannins.”
By doing this, harsh tannins from the pip were made softer to make the wine seem fruitier.
None of Romain’s wines have the rather astringent green edge that less meticulously-made 2007 red Burgundy sometimes has, especially from grapes grown on the less sunny sites.
Every year they are gloriously, memorably fruity and are greedily snapped up by knowledgeable wine lovers in 32 different countries.
One, I’m delighted to say, has found its way to a shelf in the North. Richard Granger lists Romain’s 2006 (red) Morey Saint Denis. It’s £29.73, but what a wine!
WINE OF THE WEEK
Sauvignon Blanc, AOC Touraine, Domaine du Pré Baron, 2008 Fenwick £7.99
Deliciously fresh, crisp, perfumed, dry white from the Loire Valley, with the smell of blackcurrant leaves and the taste of gooseberry. Great value and ideal with fish or a goat’s cheese salad.
WINE EXTRAS
Marks & Spencer have released a couple of terrific Chilean wines, quite unlike anything I’ve tasted from there before.
The first is a dry white from the country’s northernmost region, the Elqui Valley, on the edge of the Acatama Desert, where cool ocean breezes make viticulture possible. PX 2009 is made from the Spanish grape, Pedro Ximenez, which is used in Jerez to make the richest of all sherries. This, however, is a fresh, bone dry, soft and very herby wine with a hint of ripe pears. It’s great stuff and costs just £4.99.
The second wine is Old Vines Carignan, El León, 2006 (£9.99) from a single vineyard in the Maule Valley. The vines, 70 or more years old, yield modest quantities of intensely flavoured juice. The wine is rich, dark and chocolatey with masses of chewy damson fruit. Quintessential Carignan and utterly irresistible.
